Historical explanations of five orations of Cicero by Quintus Asconius Pedianus (about 3-88 A. D.) are preserved in a fragmentary condition. Various writers. They show great care and diligence, and are written in simple classical style. Of other works by Asconius some fragments are preserved in the commentary of Servius on Virgil. The works of the orators of this period are all lost, as are the legal writings of Proculus and Gaius Cassius Longinus (consul in 30 A. D.), who continued the schools of Labeo and Capito. The most important grammarian of this time was Marcus
Probus.Valerius Probus, of Berytus, to whom Jerome assigns the date 56 A. D. He prepared and published editions of Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, and Persius, paying attention to various readings, punctuation, and the like, and commenting upon the text. He also wrote grammatical treatises, though the grammar preserved under his name is not his work. His only extant works are a list of abbreviations and parts of the commentaries on Virgil.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FLAVIAN EMPERORS—THE SILVER AGE
Vespasian, 69-79 A. D.—Titus, 79-81 A. D.—Domitian, 81-96 A. D.—Valerius Flaccus, died about 90 A. D.—Silius Italicus, 25-101 A. D.—Statius, about 40 to about 95 A. D.—The father of Statius, about 15-80 A. D.—Saleius Bassus, about 70 A. D.—Curiatius Maternus, about 70 A. D.—Martial, about 40 to about 104 A. D.—Pliny the elder, 23-79 A. D.—Frontinus, prætor 70 A. D.—Quintilian, about 35 to about 100 A. D.
The death of Nero was followed by a year of disorder, in which Galba, Otho, and Vitellius were successively raised to the highest power, overthrown, and killed. The Flavian emperors. But the terror which had brooded over Rome in the latter years of Nero’s rule passed away with the coming of the Flavian emperors. Vespasian (69-79 A. D.) and Titus (79-81 A. D.) were firm but gentle rulers. Both were chiefly known as brave soldiers and able generals, but neither was uncultured or without literary interests. Vespasian wrote memoirs and Titus composed in 76 A. D. a poem on a comet. Their interest in literature and intellectual pursuits was, however, exhibited less by their own productions than in other ways. Vespasian was liberal to poets and artists; he paid attention to dramatic performances; he caused the three thousand bronze tablets destroyed in the burning of the capitol to be replaced by copies; and provided for the payment of rhetors, or instructors in oratory, by the state, being thus the first to establish a system of public education. The banishment of philosophers and astrologers during his reign was due to the reactionary politics of the philosophers, not to any opposition to philosophy on his part. Domitian (81-96 A. D.) was a very different character. Before his accession to the imperial power he exhibited a taste for poetry which led the writers of the day to flatter him as if he were one of the greatest of poets; but when he became emperor he relinquished all literary pursuits. No works by him are mentioned except a poem on the battle that took place at the capitol in 69 A. D. and a treatise on the care of the hair, a subject in which he was interested on account of his baldness. Nevertheless he restored the libraries which had been burned, and instituted public games in which dramatists, poets, and orators took part. But his jealousy and cruelty were greater than his literary interests. Twice, in 89 and 93 A. D., the philosophers and astrologers were banished from Rome, and though these acts may be excused on the ground of political expediency, no such excuse can be found for the cruelty which led him to persecute authors and put them to death on the flimsiest pretexts. The last years of his reign were a period of terror for men of letters even more than for his other subjects.